Manteo Mitchell back in Britain to run for the first time since his leg-breaking Olympic bravery

When American 400-metre runner Manteo Mitchell steps on to the track at
Glasgow’s Emirates Arena on Saturday, he will be hoping for a less eventful
experience than the last time he took part in a competitive race. There are,
after all, only so many inspirational achievement awards and standing
ovations a man can take.

Man of steel: Manteo Mitchell will compete in Glasgow hoping for a less eventful experience than his last competitive race, when he ran with a broken leg in LondonPhoto: STUART NICOL

In London last summer, the 25-year-old entered the annals of Olympic heroism when, leading off for his country in the heats of the 4x400m relay, he ran half of his lap in agony on a broken leg. His left fibula, the smaller of the two shin bones, snapped with an audible crack at the 200m mark and X-rays revealed a clean break. “It was literally bone, space, bone,” Mitchell said. “It broke in two.”

His extraordinary courage in finishing the lap in under 46 seconds and handing over the baton to team-mate Josh Mance was one of the defining moments of the Games, though Mitchell admits that he has been taken aback by the scale of the reaction to his bravery. Five months on, he is seriously considering hiring a public relations agent to handle the deluge of requests for public appearances.

“I kid you not, I probably do two to three speeches a week, whether it is schools, churches or companies. My phone just goes crazy all the time. I travel to different cities and states to speak and I’m getting standing ovations wherever I go. I recently did a Skype interview with schoolkids in Kenya who knew my story and just wanted to see my face.”

On his return from the Olympics, he was honoured with a series of parades in his home state of North Carolina, while the awards came thick and fast, adding to the Olympic silver medal that his team-mates secured for him in the 4x400m final.

“Plaques, trophies, you name it, I’ve gotten them.” They included an Inspirational Performance of the Year award from USA Track and Field and a purple heart from the US Marine Corps, though the highlight was being singled out for special praise by President Obama at a White House reception for America’s Olympians and Paralympians.

“The president gave a speech and said the Olympics were all about inspiration. He gave four or five different examples and then he said, and I quote: ‘Then there’s my favourite one: Manteo Mitchell. Where is he?’ He looked behind to try to find me and Michelle pointed to me and said ‘there he is, Honey’. Every other Olympian was pointing at me — Michael Phelps, Ryan Lochte, Sanya Richards, all these people who have achieved way more than I’ve ever done.

“I was nervous and shaking but it is moments like that that make me appreciate what I did. I never wanted to receive fame in this fashion but I’m definitely appreciative of all the recognition and all the thanks I’ve received for doing what I did. I was just doing what I thought everyone else would do in that situation.” Mitchell, who has been back in full training for the last 11 weeks and takes part in the individual 400m in Saturday afternoon’s British Athletics International Match, traces his injury back to an accident three days before his Olympic race when he slipped while running up some stairs in the athletes’ village and banged his shin.

Although he felt fine in the pre-race warm-up, it quickly became apparent that something was wrong when he found himself trailing runners he should have been beating soon after leaving the starting blocks.

“When I got to 200m my left leg just snapped. I heard it clearly. It was the most excruciating pain ever but at that moment I had to decide whether I was going to just lay down on the track and quit, which is not something I’m known for, or to do what I could for the next 200 metres and depend on my three team-mates to do what they were supposed to do. I took the second option.

“At 300m, I thought I wasn’t going to make it. You can’t really see it in the video but if you look closely you can see I was leaning towards the left and I had a grimace on my face. I wear shades when I run but behind the shades I actually had tears. I just had to fight the pain, fight the fear, and channel my mentality into finishing.”

In the final, agonising strides, Mitchell says he kept reciting what he calls his personal mantra: Faith. Focus. Finish. The words are tattooed on his right arm and have become something of a buzz phrase among followers of his Twitter feed, @manteomitchell.

“It seems to have taken the world by storm,” Mitchell said. “I see young athletes on Twitter using the mantra for everything. They say things like, ‘I felt like giving up but then I heard about Manteo’s story about faith, focus, finish.

“A lot of people email me and tweet me with positive results. Sometimes it has nothing to do with athletics at all. People tweet me to say they’ve finished a test that they didn’t think they were going to finish or that they’ve lost 18lb when they only intended to lose 10.

“It’s just amazing the platform I’ve been given. I didn’t want to receive such fame because I’m not the type who likes the spotlight and I don’t like to boast or brag. But just knowing that what I did has had such a positive effect on people makes it easier.”